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Re: [Phys-l] Textbooks vs multimedia



The same study showed that 50% of students never open the book to read it.
And textbooks are generally not written to accommodate the way students
learn. They are written the way the authors think students should learn.
This study showed that if texts were written using the rules for multimedia,
they would be more successful. Indeed texts are generally clotted with too
many things at once for the students to consider. When you know that you
can only hold a limited number of things in working memory (around 7) then
it is obvious from looking at most texts that students are overwhelmed by
information.

For example virtually every physics text defines something first, then gives
examples. This sequence kills learning as shown by the experiment by Lawson
where he tried the reverse sequence. In addition most texts have
distracting extraneous information on each page. The experiments with
multimedia show that this overwhelms the working memory capacity.

The other problem with most texts is that they emphasize equations rather
than conceptualization of the physical situation. Once the student is given
an equation, they generally just use it without considering whether it is
correct or useful.

Now the multimedia had about 30% Hake gain over the standard text. But IE
has a minimum of 30% gain over standard teaching. Presumably if you
combined them the gain would be even higher.

There is no evidence available to show that one standard text works better
than another. There is some evidence for research based texts when used
with IE. There is also to my knowledge no evidence that students who read
the text do better than students who don't. This doesn't mean that this
effect does not exist, but it would be a good experiment to try. There is
evidence that skipping lectures has little effect on student learning, and
one Chem. experiment showed that the grade went up if more lectures were
skipped.

Now since your students presumably read the book, it would be a good
experiment to give pre and posttest with an appropriate conceptual
evaluation to see if the method works. The Hake gain could be used to
compare with other methods.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


I ask students to bring their textbook to every class. I follow the
textbook fairly closely, pointing out important sections, comparing
some diagram in one chapter with another from another chapter, etc. and
generally trying to show the richness -such as it is - of the text, the
explanations, the equations.
It seems when students become familiar with the text, they do read it.
Of course, there are, in every textbook, some chapters that are badly
written, so I skip them, or go lightly over them.
The main beef over textbooks is the unnecessary new editions every 3
years or so.

Fouad I. Ajami
Physics Department
Champlain College
900 Riverside Drive,
St Lambert, QC, Canada, J4P 3P2
Tel: 450-672-7360-276Fax: 450-672-9299


<snip>

The current Am Journal of Physics has a very good PER article where
they
looked at textbooks vs multimedia. They pointed out that there was no
evidence that any specific feature of texts improves effectiveness.
Indeed,
from what I have seen texts run contrary to what we know about
learning and
as such are probably not very effective.

<snip>

Students expressed more likelihood of using the multimedia "text" in
preference to the standard printed text. Since students seldom crack
open
the textbook except to do assigned problems this alone would be an
improvement.

<snip>



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